Dear Diary, June 5, 2050 Dark Side of the Moon
I Robert Santos have been chosen by the voice from above to cleanse the moon of the unfortunate plague, which is hiding in the person of dentist Donan Gyman. Dentist by trade, driller of souls, stealer of minds and engineer of darkness. Owing to my slight problem with schizophrenia the colonists have not heeded my warning, but I will not abandon them in this, their time of greatest need.
It all started 2 weeks ago when I was closing up my shift as gatekeeper of the K-mart supply store in the Kronos Crater of sector C-42. The dentist’s office had been closed for months and I heard a voice from the intercom tell me, "Evil in isle 2, Evil in isle 2." I walked down isle 2 and saw nothing. I continued walking forward and saw the door open to the dentist’s office. Inside Donan was unloading his drugs and his lasers. I could see snakes and millipedes crawling on his body. I knew the type he was. He was no doubt stationed here as the sorry ending of a failed career in the Military Space Corp. He opened his mouth and a black mist rolled out, his words were scratched music and green goo dripped out of his ear. I told him to go back where he came from, but he gargled that he was going to stay.
Every day since I have been monitoring the dentist’s movements from the security room in K-marts back room. He has brought in a lot of equipment that he doesn't need. I know he is building some sort of bomb. I have warned the local council to have him thrown in jail, but they are under some kind of spell and won't hear me. I have warned as many locals as I can to stay away from his shop. Some naive young women already have appointments to bring their precious children into his lair. None of that will matter if he blows up that bomb. He may be trying something else, perhaps he will suck the power out of our minds with his tools. He may implant devices in our brains when he says he is fixing our teeth to control us. He is the only dentist in this sector and sooner or later he will have most of us and the ruling council under his control.
There is one way to know for sure. The voices have led me in the right direction in the past. They led me to the cobalt mine in sector 15. They warned colony of the solar flare in ‘45. At that time I told no one of the voices and the visions. I told them it was science and mathematics and they believe me. Ever since the people have known the truth they no longer seem to trust me. They look at me with fear in their eyes, they fear my power. I will have to save them all whether they like it or not. Tomorrow I will go and be that dear dentist’s first customer. When he turns his back I will throw him down, strap him into the chair, give him the happy juice, and test out his the new technology he has been assembling on the good dentist himself. If no harms done, I'll know the voices are wrong. If the evil that I have been warned of is unleashed, then the dentist will receive his just reward. “Evil in isle 2, Evil in isle 2.”
Final Stop
Final Stop You fell asleep on the bus heading to Rexburg. Waking up, you realize that you have no idea where you are. It is dark outside. Threatening, dark clouds gather in the sky. Fishing into your crowded purse, you grab out your frightening pink cell phone. You hope to see the time, but your cell phone has died. You yell, panic stricken, to the bus driver asking for the time. He grunts and mutters something about dinner. He is a fat, droopy faced man, wearing a name tag that says: Charles Banton III. You are reminded why you chose to sleep. It was far better than staring into his disgusting face for hours on end. You whine to him, asking to be taken back to your arranged stop, but he refuses. “This is the last stop. You’ll have to get off here.” He says, stopping the bus and turning towards you. You can almost see the stench of his breath. The doors open and a cold wind rushes in from the cemetery just outside. “What?! Are you serious?! I am NOT getting off here!” You shout, flinging your hair around sassily. “Okay. Then you can stay here.” He says as his eyes suddenly got big. Charles stands up and begins to wedge his way towards you. You panic. Just as he is about to reach you, you jump across the seats. His hand catches your leg, but the grease and sweat built up on his palm allows you to slip away from his grasps. You run off the bus screaming for help, but the town seems to be deserted. Panic stricken, you stop. The bus driver has gotten off the bus and is standing behind you by this time. He taps your shoulder and you whirl around. “No!” You cry as he reaches towards your face. He snatches the potato chip stuck in your hair and plops it into his mouth. He then tells you that you are very close to where you originally wanted to get off, and where to go. He turns and drives off. You stand there for a while, dumbfounded. You then realize you should get going before the gang of dark characters coming out of the cemetery sees you.
SHADES OF PINK
You remove your fuscia bowtie from the coral folds of your Oxford. Slipping out of your double-breasted blush-on-magenta pinstripe suit, you match the seams before hanging it on a cherry finished wooden hanger and place your suit among the pink menagerie of clothing hanging in a straight line. After folding your shirt and placing it on top of the laundry basket, you pull together the lapels of your bubblegum robe and slide into your bunny slippers.
You had just received a pink slip today from your job as a clerical assistant at a make-up company. They said your ideas were marketing too much to the pink dollar. All you want to do this evening is settle down in your loft apartment to a baked salmon dinner and sip a pink lady—light on the lime, heavy on the gin. You reach up the grab the grenadine from the bar cabinet.
Plunk-thump! Plunk-thump!
So disturbed are your thoughts, the bottle slips from your fingers and shatters across your pale carpet.
“Ah, oui!” you exclaim. “Zis is ze last time I will deal with zat swine’s stupid peg leg!”
He has been living next door to you for three months now, and all you can hear night and day is the plunk-thump of his peg where he should have a leg. You glance towards your door where your cane-sward rests in the umbrella stand. You too had fought in The War, but you had gotten a stylish cane while your neighbor refused to consider others and insisted on hobbling around on wood.
Mopping up the crimson stain from your carpet, you know you will have to replace this section of berber. Frustrated, you throw down the rag and fall into bed. This has been too exhausting of a day for you to do anything but sleep.
“Zzzz…”
The static of your dream transforms into a snow-strewn landscape, aglow against the darkening dusk. A figure moves closer, the gentle plunk-thump muffled in the unbroken snow upon the desolate street. The gait of the man moving towards you breaks over your fragile mind. You draw your sword from its cane and give a mighty shout as you charge the too familiar figure.
“En garde, you English pig!” you roar.
Wordlessly he turns and you fall upon him. With a stab and trust, you feel skin break and sinews part as you run him threw. He slumps and you let him fall into a drift by the side of the road. Blood oozes from the lifeless body, arms and leg and peg splayed, already half-buried by the falling snow.
You wake with a start.
The rosy fingers of dawn glisten on your partly unsheathed cane-sword, a blemish of pink barely visible on its silvery edge.
The Makeshift Grave of Emily Baker
Lightning struck the Baker tree and a gasp was heard beneath the roots entangled about a young girl’s heart. Electricity began pumping it though it lay cold and lifeless, passing the trees life through to her. Her eyes open yet the earth remains unseen, instead the face of Jack Miller stayed engrained in them, remembering her fall, Jack’s hands at her back causing her to roll down the hill. Once again she felt the pain of a rock piercing her skull and then the numbness. She could imagine what she must have looked like laying there in the
Her name is Emily Baker, and once again she was fourteen years old and in the middle of
She knew that everyone was asleep, it being night and all, but she couldn’t help but wonder if everything had been a dream, why had she woken up? Why now? Looking up she saw golden arches in the shape of an M and she followed it, glad to have something to follow instead of just street numbers. She walked up in front of it and saw a sign on the building called McDonalds that said Open Late. Well, she thought, it’s late. She walked in to find no one there and wondered if this was some horrible nightmare, that everyone on the earth had died, or if Orson Welles hadn’t been too far off with his War of the Worlds broadcast. However before the panic could set in a girl came to the front of the store looking shocked at Emily’s appearance.
“Can I help you?”
“What year is it?” Emily asked curiously.
“1990.” The girl was trying not to stare but obviously something was wrong with Emily, and suddenly scared about her own appearance she ran to the bathroom. Relief flooded her body, she was a girl, she still looked fourteen, there weren’t any worms crawling out of her face like she had thought, no, she was just covered in dirt and her clothes were caked with mud, she was a horrifying sight, but not in the way you might think for someone who just came back to life after almost fifty years of being dead.
She washed her hands got as much of the dirt as she could off her face, but she couldn’t get it all, not without a bath, and so with a determined attitude she retuned to the front of the store to talk to the girl.
She saw her standing there, looking bored, and so Emily hesitantly came to stand in front of her.
“Excuse me, do you know where I can find
The girl smiled and gave her directions, telling her that it was barely a half mile from where they stood.
With a ray of hope smiling upon her Emily journeyed to her house, glad to find the door was open. She thought that she should wake her parents they would be very glad to see her, but she settled to just get into the bath.
It felt good to get the grime off her body, but she couldn’t stand being in the water too long, for shortly after getting in it had turned as brown as her hair. But that didn’t get her down, she was clean, and she didn’t smell like dirt. She jumped when someone’s fist pounded on the door.
“Who’s in there?”
Mom? Emily was so excited that she opened the door as quickly to find an unfamiliar women standing in front of her.
“Who are?” Emily asked. “Where is my mom?”
The women looked confused. “What are you talking about? This is my house, you must be in the wrong place.”
Emily looked around and realized that nothing looked familiar, tears welling up in her eyes she turned back to the women. “Do you know where Mr. and Mrs. Baker live?”
The women’s frown grew bigger, and she walked out of the room and to another where she picked out some clean clothes. When she came back she handed them to Emily.
“You’re clothes look pretty bad, I thought you could use these.”
Emily smiled in gratitude and took them, but she noticed the women hadn’t answered her question.
“Where are Mr. and Mrs. Baker?”
The women looked down at her hands. “They died about two years ago, I bought the house right after, did you know them?”
Emily’s smile faded and she began to cry again, and without saying anything she shut the door. Quickly she put the clothes on, finding it odd for a girl to wear pants, but she didn’t fight it she dressed and opened the door to find the women standing there still.
“I’m sorry I have to go.” She knew that she was being impolite but she felt like her heart was about to burst and she couldn’t stand the sight of her parents house that was no longer theirs.
So she walked the streets until the sun came up and people came out of their houses. She walked amongst them aimlessly, unsure of what she was going to do now. If her parents were dead then she didn’t have anyone else, and then she thought of Jack. He would help her.
She walked from person to person asking each of them the same question. “Excuse me, do you know Jack Miller?”
By her feet were killing her and she had asked so many people that question that she no longer listened to their responses, so you can imagine her surprise when someone finally replied with a ‘yes.’
“You do?” She asked excitedly.
“Yes, I work with him, he works on the tenth floor of this building.”
The man continued walking into the building, but Emily just looked up. She had found him, she was so happy. She walked right into the building and straight to an elevator.
All the people were looking at her funny and she realized it must be odd to see a little girl alone in a building like this, but she didn’t care, she was going to see Jack and then she would know what to do.
Arriving on the tenth floor her stomach got a case of the butterflies, but that didn’t deter her, she walked straight to a door marked, ‘Jack Miller’, she prayed that it was her Jack, she didn’t want to have to go back outside, and knocked loudly.
“Just a moment.” Came the reply from the other side.
So she did just that, she waited for a moment until the door opened and a very tall man stood there. She knew that he was going to look older, but she hadn’t expected the graying hair, but she could see that it was him, she could tell by the eyes, but he wasn’t looking at her, he was watching someone across the hall.
“Can I help you?” He asked absentmindedly
“Hi Jack.”
He looked down at her. “Who are…”
But he didn’t need to finish, he knew, he recognized me obviously, she thought, I hadn’t changed at all,
His mouth dropped and his eyes grew huge and all the color drained from his face.
“What the…”
He seemed unable to finish a sentence and Emily felt slightly upset at the look of horror on his face.
“I woke up.” She said quietly.
A man was passing behind her and Jack grabbed his arm. “Can you see her?”
“Yes?” The man gave Jack the I-think-you-re-crazy look and walked away.
“I’m not a ghost Jack, the tree brought me back to life.”
“What?” He was looking weak, like he was about to pass out, yet completely awake at the same time.
“The tree that you planted over me, lightning struck it last night and it brought me back to life.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know.” Why wasn’t he being nicer, she thought, I thought he would have at least asked me how I was by now?
“You have to go, and don’t come back.”
“But Jack…” Emily started to cry once again when he slammed the door right in her face.
She knocked on the door only for him to scream at her to go away and to never come back, and that she should have stayed dead.
But Emily was a determined girl and so she just kept knocking. He opened the door and glared at her.
“I said, go away.” He looked so angry that Emily felt afraid.
“But Jack I won’t tell anyone your secret.”
He paled again and bent down to her level. “No one will believe that I killed you, so go ahead and try.”
Emily just shook her head. “That’s not what I was talking about Jack, I know that was an accident, I was talking about the fact that you’re… gay.”
She hesitated on the last word, and was surprised when he just laughed. “Yeah well, I got over that one so you go ahead and tell that too they all know that I have a wife and I’m happily married. So do your worst to me, but I swear if you don’t stay away from me I’ll kill you again.”
Emily backed away; she had never been scared of Jack before, he had always been her best friend. She loved him, and back when she was alive she had found out that he was gay she had told him that she still loved him in spite of it. He had gotten angry, and even then she hadn’t been scared, she knew that he would never hurt her on purpose, and even when he pushed her and she died she still loved him, she wasn’t scared because she never thought of him as a killer. But he thought of himself as one, she could see that in his eyes, and knew that if she didn’t stay away then he would stay true to his word.
So she ran, straight to the elevator, straight out of the building and ran straight for the park.
She was alone, her parents were dead, and her dearest friend wanted her to die, again, and she had no place to go. She walked back to where the tree stood, charred and broken and knelt beside it. This was where she belonged; the world didn’t want her anymore. So handful by handful she moved the dirt aside until she could lay inside her hole, then slowly she buried herself in the earth where she belonged, her last thoughts before the earth suffocated her were to the tree, sad that something so beautiful had to die to bring her back to a world where she didn’t belong, and then her thoughts became nothing.
No one understood why, it was a miracle really because after being struck by lightning a tree never grew back, but this tree did, and almost as if overnight the tree returned to it’s former beauty right over the makeshift grave of the returned and gone again Emily Baker.
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